Looking for passges to justify Abraham having a slave

[clem456]

There are good reasons to doubt the ‘absolute’ sense that you portray deprivation of rights. You might, likewise, claim that the subjugation or deprivation of the rights of children is intrinsically evil. I would answer that there is nothing intrinsic about it. The issue is about whose rights and for what ends.

A child’s right of movement is rightly curtailed by parents concerned about danger to the child that the child may not have the capacity to judge. In some sense, an agent who has a better capacity to make judgements may have superseding responsibilities regarding rights and freedoms. I doubt these kinds of rights are ‘in principle,’ however, for the same reason I doubt that freedoms are, even though restrictions of freedoms are ONLY permitted for warranted reasons.

The God-given rights of every human being are inviolable, or absolute, or whatever you prefer to call them. The ability of a child to move and do as he wills is simply not a right. Children have desires or passions, parents have charge over them and curtail those desires or passions in a responsible way, hopefully. But a child has an inviolable right to life, food, shelter, clothing, etc…It’s really not a very complicated thing. A child doesn’t have the right to do as he pleases. Perhaps there is a confusion between license and rights?

**I. RESPECT FOR THE HUMAN PERSON

1929 Social justice can be obtained only in respecting the transcendent dignity of man. The person represents the ultimate end of society, which is ordered to him:

What is at stake is the dignity of the human person, whose defense and promotion have been entrusted to us by the Creator, and to whom the men and women at every moment of history are strictly and responsibly in debt.35
1930 Respect for the human person entails respect for the rights that flow from his dignity as a creature. These rights are prior to society and must be recognized by it. They are the basis of the moral legitimacy of every authority: by flouting them, or refusing to recognize them in its positive legislation, a society undermines its own moral legitimacy.36 If it does not respect them, authority can rely only on force or violence to obtain obedience from its subjects. It is the Church’s role to remind men of good will of these rights and to distinguish them from unwarranted or false claims. **

Originally Posted by Peter Plato
The freedom individuals have is in pursuit of their own true well-being, not to ANY willed end. Freedom to harm your own well-being ought not be promoted or even tolerated, even though this may be beyond anyone’s capacity to insure. This is where obligations or responsibilities also come into play. Obligations are natural restrictions on rights and freedoms that arise when the rights and freedoms of some come into conflict with those of others.

The freedom of individuals consists in conforming and giving themselves freely to God’s will. Merely pursuing their own well being is not freedom, it is slavery to self. The well being of a person consists precisely in looking after the will of God and the well being of others, FIRST.

**I. FREEDOM AND RESPONSIBILITY

1731 Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one’s own responsibility. By free will one shapes one’s own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.

1732 As long as freedom has not bound itself definitively to its ultimate good which is God, there is the possibility of choosing between good and evil, and thus of growing in perfection or of failing and sinning. This freedom characterizes properly human acts. It is the basis of praise or blame, merit or reproach.

1733 The more one does what is good, the freer one becomes. There is no true freedom except in the service of what is good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and leads to "the slavery of sin."28**

Originally Posted by Peter Plato
In an important sense, obligations ‘subjugate’ the rights and freedoms of some to those of others, precisely because of the demands of justice and morality. I never claimed that virtue or holiness justifies slavery, I merely noted that slavery is not logically incompatible with virtue or holiness. Given that virtue and holiness are more basic to and, at the same time, of more worth than physical freedom, and not necessarily incompatible with it, there is nothing intrinsically good about liberty in this sense and nothing intrinsically evil about constraint.

You have a pretty big hill to climb in claiming that the liberty of a human being is not an intrinsic right, and that slavery is not intrinsically evil. Virtue and holiness can flourish more readily when the God-given rights of persons are respected. When they are not, the aggressor is not advancing in holiness or virtue, and the slave is encouraged to foster anger, resentment, despair, etc…Some may attain to sanctity amidst difficult conditions, true, but the denial of freedom makes it more difficult for one pursue one’s beatitude, God.
Now, if by liberty you mean free license that is unrestrained by respect for God and others, that is a different story.

 

[Peter_Plato]

The freedom of individuals consists in conforming and giving themselves freely to God’s will. Merely pursuing their own well being is not freedom, **it is slavery to self. **The well being of a person consists precisely in looking after the will of God and the well being of others, FIRST.

I noticed you left out the word ‘true’ in my depiction of well-being. One’s own TRUE well-being is not ‘slavery to self,’ it is finding one’s true self in God. By harmonizing one’s will to the will of God - the omniscient Creator of all - one’s own well-being is ipso facto achieved. They are one and the same thing precisely because truly finding one’s real self is finding oneself in God. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”

We do not lose our wills so much as will what God wills for us. It is we (including our wills) who are sanctified, not nullified.

 

[clem456]

I noticed you left out the word ‘true’ in my depiction of well-being. One’s own TRUE well-being is not ‘slavery to self,’ it is finding one’s true self in God. By harmonizing one’s will to the will of God - the omniscient Creator of all - one’s own well-being is ipso facto achieved. They are one and the same thing precisely because truly finding one’s real self is finding oneself in God. “Our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.”

We do not lose our wills so much as will what God wills for us. It is we (including our wills) who are sanctified, not nullified.

Thanks for the clarification.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

I think we are talking past each other, or you are overthinking what is being said.
Scripture conveys God’s truth in the way that God intends. He inspires it. (And by the way, this is very tough to accept outside of faith, so our conversation could be pointless anyway). Human beings write scripture.

Ok, so humans write the scripture which conveys God’s truth as he intends and inspires it.

God’s will and truth are accomplished with the cooperation of human beings. Human beings have flawed or imperfect conceptions of the will of God. Ancient peoples interpreted God’s will and action in historical events differently that we do today.

Now here’s where my issues come into play:

1. We say God’s truth is that God is not in favor of slavery.
2. In a literal reading of the scripture (which was written by humans), it appears that God endorses slavery.
3. God inspires scripture to say the exact opposite of its literal meaning.
4. There is no allegorical or figurative reading of the scripture that shows God is against slavery.
5. Humans have misinterpreted God’s position on slavery. It is completely wrong and utterly lacking in truth.
6. Despite the fact that scripture runs completely counter to what is intended and it is completely devoid of truth it was still inspired by God.

In short, why would God inspire scripture to say what it says about slavery when he is really against it? Is there a non-literal reading of those scriptures that makes sense for why it’s written as it’s written?

God does not change. He was not at one time in favor of murder and slavery, and at other times against. God does not change. God has never encouraged atrocities. That is a flawed human representation of God. (Have you ever made a mistake in relaying a concept to someone?)

I understand the idea that someone can hear one thing and pass on something not 100% accurate to what was originally said. But when the final product is completely opposite to its proper meaning, then how much weight can we give to any scripture? On top of that it’s not as though there is just a single reference to slavery approval in the Bible. There are multiple instances each which support slavery and which are said to be interpreted. Heck, slaves are mentioned in the Ten Commandments.

All of scripture must be read in light of the Gospel. The word of God is not just a something, it is a somebody. Jesus Christ is God’s only, final, complete, Word. If it doesn’t pass Jesus Christ’s gaze as true and good, then it’s not true and good. So God has never approved of slavery and murder. Rather, human beings have enslaved and murdered one another using the name of God, while God has patiently rebuked us and still loved us. Human beings are not God, and do not know God’s will very well in many cases.

Where in the Gospel does it say to not hold slaves? Where in the Gospel does it say that people were misinterpreting the earlier scriptures regarding slavery? Where does the Gospel trump the rest of scripture when there is a conflict between the two – especially since Jesus said that he wasn’t there to change one letter of the law?

In short, ancient peoples had slaves and murdered each other in God’s name because that is simply how they lived. They were ignorant of God’s will and their cultures simply expressed this.

This has to include the Hebrews who were said to have literally heard God speak to them after escaping Egypt.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

So in other words you’re admitting that you’re begging the question and arguing in a circle.

You asked me whether I felt that if I were alive in that day and time if I would own a slave. (Actually you mockingly insinuated that I made incorrect presumptions instead of just asking me.) Anyway, I answered your inquiry as to my opinion. I gave my opinion, and there’s no question being begged here.

So if you’re begging the question

…which I’m not…

and arguing in a circle in the first instance

…which I’m not…

how do you know that you’re not also in the second?

Luckily since premises A and B are both false, I don’t have to prove your conclusion is false (although it too is false).

And if according to you the source of morality is relative and subjective, on what basis does your moral indignation towards the Bible? What criteria do you have to base that on? You send your own biases and prejudices?

I’ve already mentioned my rule of thumb for morality. It’s a combination of the golden rule, followed by the idea that one’s rights should not impede another’s rights. Even the most relativistic of people (which I’m not, but I do allow for some leeway) is against the idea of slavery. Since slavery is allowed and encouraged in the Bible, my moral indignation toward those passages in the Bible comes quite easily and with no fear that I’m being overly biased against the rights of slaveowners.

If morality is subjective and relative, then what was “moral” for you now was also just as “moral” for Abraham and other Bedouin cultures in their day.

Which means that slavery was “moral” to them just as its “immoral” to you and you really have no grounds to disagree on any moral basis at all.

You seem to have me pegged as an anarchist, where morality is only limited by one’s own conscience. As I noted my sense of morality comes from a very different place where I put a high value on the rights and dignity of others. This is quite solid ground to disagree against moral failures.

So, to be frank, that’s hypocrisy. You’re demanding that “Abraham”(whatever this image of him must reside in your mind) must abide by your moral standards objectively while maintaining a position that morality is individual, subjective, and relative.

I don’t think it’s hypocritcal to say one must take into consideration the lives, the rights, the emotions of others when contemplating an act. In the end, assuming he was real and assuming he had a slave, he had to look another human being in the eye and contemplate violence against him if he didn’t do precisely as he was told. That’s a very base standard that all men past, present, and future have to consider.

So it follows that 1)you’re to dim to see the self-contradictory position that you have(which I don’t believe) or 2) your assertion is based solely on your own biases and prejudices against God and you are abiding by those prejudices and biases by claiming moral superiority over God. Which is an obvious and absurd double-standard and undercuts your whole argument.

Let’s start with 2. I am against slavery, period. I don’t care if it was slavery based on the Bible or not. It can be the Conquistadors taking part in the slave trade. I would speak out against Muslim slavers, atheist slavers, and if aliens drop down from the sky and take slaves to the Andromeda galaxy I’d stand up against them too. My hatred and utter disgust for things like slavery is not centered on any one flavor of it.

It’s just that here we are and there are people in the first world trying to whitewash atrocities of the past as if it was all rainbows, sunshine, and lollipops. This idea that we can’t admit to the faults and failure of things we believe in is ridiculous. I’m an American and I love my country, but I’m willing to look back just on its actions against its own citizens and face it honestly. Even putting aside the slave trade as we know it, the United States has acted with great hostility against the Native Americans. We interred thousands of Japanese-Americans in what were essentially slave camps during the Second World War. I can’t speak of all the good the country has done without also confronting its times of wickedness. When a christian goes through a Bible and believes it to be entirely true then he or she has to confront passages which are uncomfortable. To brush it aside by saying God can do as he pleases or whatever fallback position one wants, it is not being true to one’s beliefs and one’s self.

Now with 1, I hope I’ve shown you how non-contradictory I take morality and rights. Perhaps you’ll find I’m not so “dim” afterall.

If you were honest at best all you could say is that you disagreed with slave ownership ** according to your opinion**. Agree to disagree. And that’s it.

By making this a moral argument you violate your own philosophy thus nullifying the argument altogether.

As I’ve noted, what you claim is my philosophy isn’t my philosophy. I disagree with slave ownership not because of my opinion, but because to own a slave is to deny a man his most basic of rights. My philosophy is to take into account the effect one has on others. It’s a philosophy that is simple, intuitive, and could never allow for slavery. It’s also a philosophy that outshines the one God seems to present when he endorses slavery and all of the horrible actions against slaves.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Growing up, my Italian Catholic mom was not adverse to using a wooden spoon as a method of discipline. We all respected her ‘right’ to use it and equally respected its efficacy in terms of getting the job done. We also never, for one moment doubted that her motives for using it were always tied to her great love for us and her desire for us to be the best we could be. For her, discipline was key and far exceeded ‘freedom’ as a basic requirement for a happy, stable family and community.

For my mother it was a smack on the arm. She disciplined us, but I have three siblings and a total of nine nieces and nephews. My siblings stress discipline but do not use corporal punishment and they are all doing well in school and are very polite and attentive children. I agree discipline is important but I would disagree with you on the use that violence is a necessary aspect of that discipline.

Those of us, among relatives and friends, who prioritize responsibility and self-discipline have fared far better in terms of stability and general happiness than those who have placed ‘freedom’ higher.

Would it be fair to say that as you go older and were given increased discipline you and those relatives and friends you mentioned were also given more freedom?

Freedom always takes its toll on bystanders.

I’m puzzled by your use of always. Yes, sometimes freedom can take its toll on others. Anyone who has been in a room, train, plane, market with a wild child whose parents feel telling little Johnny “no” isn’t right would agree. But sometimes freedom has no impact on others, and sometimes freedom has benefited others.

Looking back on our family history, a modern progressive thinker might condemn my mother as being an abusive woman based solely on the fact that she was not averse to using corporal punishment, just as you are prepared to condemn God based solely on your modern conception of the ‘wrongness’ of slavery.

And here’s the key difference we have. There was a thread floating around here a few months back entitled (something akin to) “Why does the church apologize for burning heretics?” I and others had responded that being a heretic was not a crime. Believing in another faith is not a crime. Being born as the child of a slave is not a crime, and neither is being from a land conquered by the Hebrews. When your mom hit you it probably was because you had done something wrong. She likely told you to do something and you didn’t do it. Would she ever hit you for not knowing something that was never told to you? Corporal punishment is that, a punishment. It is the consequences of a crime or for doing something wrong. The method by which one becomes a slave in the Bible is not a reason for punishment, especially one so harsh and possibly fatal.

At bottom, this is what I think is wrong with your argument against God vis a vis rules about slavery. You don’t seem to ‘know’ God, in the same way that a modern progressivist thinker does not ‘know’ my Italian Catholic mother. You feel free to condemn the God you don’t know based upon a perception of wrong that is essentially tied to a conceptual assessment devoid of real-world connections.

Even if you say that I don’t know God, he is said to have made several assertions about himself and what he asks of people. They contradict what it’s written that he said about taking part in slavery. If I don’t know the whole of God, I can at least say with certainty that the part of himself he has made public is contrary and alludes to the possibility of monstrous intent.

And you can’t really make the analogy between how one would perceive your mother and one would perceive God. Your mother is not an all-powerful being (even though mothers sometimes feel like that when we’re little ). Even if you leave out how I noted how my siblings do without corporal punishment in installing discipline, your mother probably had limited options in installing discipline in her children. God is God. If he feels that we are falling away from him, then he has a multitude of other ways to go about bringing people to him that don’t require acts like slavery. Also, can I assume that when punishment was doled out it was by her or your father, and that she didn’t ask one of your siblings (if you have any) to whack you with a spoon when she was mad at you? She has to be the disciplinarian as she’s above you, not the person on the same level as you – like a human slave owner to a human slave.

After over thirty years in public schools as an educator and seeing first-hand the results of a gradual decline of a healthy respect for the priority of discipline and responsibility over ‘freedom’ (however that is understood) I would not for one moment trade the loving concern of my mother for the detached neutrality of many moderns.

Discipline and freedom is not a zero-sum game. One can instill discipline in someone while allowing them certain freedoms. Plus it’s a far cry from telling students that they need to sit down and shut up in school with telling a man he can never see his family again unless he pledges loyalty forever to him and his god.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

What we have today is a complete failure (among modern progressivists) to identify end-goods at all so none are willing to put much of a stake on attaining them. The move is to let others, including our children ‘figure it out for themselves.’ Clearly, that move is made because sight of the ‘end good’ has been lost. What would be the point, in their eyes, of putting at stake any present good for the sake of some future intangible?

Would you say that raising a child to grow and be a responsible adult who tries to improve the lives of others is an end-good? Even if it does not also come with believing in the christian God?
Again, I agree with you that we need to teach our children to be better people. I wouldn’t mind if civics classes were mandatory. I just don’t believe the christian God is an end-good for everyone, and again I don’t feel that it’s an either/or proposition when it comes to responsibility and freedom.

If you look at every moral issue alive today, it comes down to a conflict between immediately available goods (and freedom to choose them) and longer term teleological ends, which are increasingly portrayed as ‘pie in the sky.’
What is completely forgotten, however, is that personal virtues (and, therefore, personal happiness) are often tied to the disciplined habits and fine-tuning of what Aristotle would call the “daimōn” (“spirit”) by a determined mindfulness over one’s “aretē” or “virtue” (excellence) by “phronesis,” the “practical or ethical wisdom.” Aristotle saw eudaimonia (the highest human good or ‘happiness’ to be the cultivated result of sound practical philosophy and human wisdom. He (and I) would warn against a view that license - in the sense of subjective personal freedom - of itself - has any claim in terms of being conducive to human flourishing.

That’s not a reason in and of itself to deny freedoms. Just because you yourself may not value the worth of a particular freedom doesn’t mean that others should feel the same way. For what may seem like a useless freedom may turn out to be good not only for the individual but for society as a whole. It is better to pare away freedoms that harm others than to add freedoms only when enough people deem them worthy enough to be allowed.

Ultimately, I do think this is the ground of an argument for why servitude is not necessarily an evil in itself. The external situation does not stop any human from cultivating personal virtue that would lead to real happiness in the Aristotelian sense that was likely an aspect of ancient cultures, generally.

A man denied all freedoms including freedom of thought is not truly happy. There is no sound philosophy or human wisdom there that would lead to eudaimonia.

Socrates argued that evil is not something that is done to a person, but done to oneself.

I would imagine Socrates wrote that before being sentenced to drink hemlock.

Thus, a slave or servant could be virtuous in a far more important sense than what you would accept. An emperor or slave owner may put themselves into far greater jeopardy regarding their own temporal (and eternal) happiness than a servant or even a chattel slave.

Herod the Great, Caligula or Nero come to mind here. I would be far more willing to accept the life of a slave than assume the life of either of those three ‘gentlemen.’

The three men that you mentioned had the power to do some good and implement a sound positive philosophy. Do you think if a good person were to step in any of their sandals that they couldn’t achieve a proper happiness by changing things for the better?

Perhaps you view this differently, but I would be far more willing to accept a fate at Auschwitz than to be Hitler or one of his henchmen. The external ‘benefits’ would be considered a ‘trifle’ in exchange for the real interior harm.

Again, one acts as one acts and our roles are not set for us (despite what Shakespeare said).

All things being equal the external comforts pale in comparison to interior goods - truth, goodness and beauty. Slavery might deprive someone of some externals, but the internals are, ultimately what count.

Yet God is impotent in bringing those internals to those people in ways other than slavery. He taints the acts of those who hold slaves by telling them that it is right and good.

You mentioned above that freedom always takes its toll on bystanders. I would say that there are times when taking away freedom takes its toll on bystanders. It can allow observers to see others as not deserving of rights and dignity. It can cloud them as to what is good and what is not.

I think it was Teresa of Avila who said in light of eternity our present life is comparable to one night in an inconvenient hotel. I would add that the ‘internal goods’ of the soul (truth, beauty and goodness) are glimpses into eternity and cause the external goods to pale in comparison.

But as I noted God cares about our actions on earth even though they are a blink of an eye. He is said to judge us for all eternity based solely on that “one night” so why not take a stand and denounce evil for evil like he does with murder and theft. Let that one night exist freely and let our actions be true!

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Do I, therefore, condone slavery? Not at all, but precisely because any conditions for desiring it fail to have any appeal whatsoever. The problem comes when more than a modicum of temporal goods are emphasized and given undue importance. As soon as the “temporal” becomes all encompassing (as it does in any materialist ideology) THAT is when the very conditions for slavery are initiated. Slavery (in its most abhorrent forms) is a byproduct of materialism - that temporal things have more value than people.

It would be more accurate to change that last word to “souls” or “abject worship”. I’ve spent this whole thread advocating for the value of people.

Unfortunately, modern views on abortion and contraception embody materialism at their core, which is why in our materialist culture, these seem quite permissible. We have lost our souls, which is precisely why we view the external circumstances of a person’s life to be more valuable than the internal state of their being.

I’m going to hold off on this as I’m not here to defend materialism but to speak against slavery in all of its forms.

My guess would be that the very reason you decry ‘slavery’ is because it unjustly deprives some persons of those external goods, completely overlooking the interior state of their being as inconsequential to the question.

I’m not sure what’s with the scare quotes on “slavery”. It’s a real thing that affected real people. As I’ve stated numerous times now, I’m against slavery as it is cruel and evil. I don’t buy for a second the argument that Biblical slavery was good, because even if you put an infinite value on belief in God it shows God as not being perfectly good (as he encourages evil in a temporal sense), and a being of that power could reach those same goals while not resorting to advocating wickedness. It’s an argument that tries to paint an inaccurate picture of a Bible that doesn’t see anything wrong with slavery.

Also you neglect those believers who agree with the value of an afterlife yet can’t abide shoddy excuses for a portrait of God that sees the end justifying the means.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

"Fine. But if we apply the reckoning that you do with the slavery passages, that it’s possible to correctly interpet that God didn’t create the universe at all!"if, You can prove otherwise glad to listen.

My point isn’t to prove that God did not create the universe. My point is to show that if you want to say a part of scripture is not literal but at the same time is true, you have to show the tangent on how its figurative meaning connects with the written words. You can’t have a figurative meaning of a sentence be the 180-degrees complete opposite of its literal definition. Otherwise why bother with words?

 

[Amandil]

Mike 11755841:

You asked me whether I felt that if I were alive in that day and time if I would own a slave. Anyway, I answered your inquiry as to my opinion. I gave my opinion, and there’s no question being begged here.

Of course there is, because you’re not a Bedouin tribal chief living 3000 years before the coming of the Roman Empire. Your a guy living in 21st century America and are basing your entire position from that perspective.

If your morality doesn’t come from God, then it comes from your subjective opinion.

I’ve already mentioned my rule of thumb for morality. It’s a combination of the golden rule, followed by the idea that one’s rights should not impede another’s rights.

What if another atheist is a nihilist, a communist, a hedonist, or a utilitarianist, or even a Nazi(nationalist-socialist); moralities diametrically opposed to yours.

Which one is the correct morality? How do you know that yours is correct and theirs wrong? Why? How do you prove your morality without arguing in a circle? You can’t.

Even the most relativistic of people (which I’m not, but I do allow for some leeway) is against the idea of slavery.

By leeway you mean you bend to those acts of immorality that you find agreeable, meaning that you decide what is moral or immoral, thus you’re a subjectivist.

It also begs the question. I doubt that you’ve actually done a real study or poll of relativists.

And even if they are (against slavery), then they are violating their philosophy of relativism.

Since slavery is allowed and encouraged in the Bible, my moral indignation toward those passages in the Bible comes quite easily and with no fear that I’m being overly biased against the rights of slave owners.

1. Slavery is not “allowed and encouraged” by God, its tolerated.
2. “The rights of slave owners” is entirely a construct of your own imagination based upon your own biases and prejudices. You clearly lack any understanding of anything regards to the historical context of the culture and are basing everything solely on your assumptions.
3. Your moral indignation against the Bible doesn’t begin with your opinions about slavery but your atheism. You’re merely using the mention of slavery in the Bible to justify that prejudice.

Even if slavery was explicitly condemned by the Bible you’d simply find another passage or another excuse to hate God and reject the Faith.

So let’s stop pretending that slavery has anything to do with this, shall we?

You seem to have me pegged as an anarchist, where morality is only limited by one’s own conscience. As I noted my sense of morality comes from a very different place where I put a high value on the rights and dignity of others. This is quite solid ground to disagree against moral failures.

You just contradicted yourself. You claimed that your sense of morality comes from a “different place” than your conscience, yet you then say that “I put a high value on the rights and dignity of others.”

Thus you’re limiting your morality according to your conscience.

I don’t think it’s hypocritcal to say one must take into consideration the lives, the rights, the emotions of others when contemplating an act. In the end, assuming he was real and assuming he had a slave, he had to look another human being in the eye and contemplate violence against him if he didn’t do precisely as he was told. That’s a very base standard that all men past, present, and future have to consider.

Your mischaracterization shows a terrible understanding of Bedouin cultures. If a conquered individual had the choice of a) being taken as a slave or b) being left out in the desert to die of exposure, even I wouldn’t be so stupid or prideful to take (b). Being taken as a slave was a mercy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

In any case it is hypocritical because you’re still judging a person by your modern standards and not the circumstances and context of that culture.

Let’s start with 2. I am against slavery, period.

That’s wonderful. But frankly its still just your personal subjective opinion.

To brush it aside by saying God can do as he pleases or whatever fallback position one wants, it is not being true to one’s beliefs and one’s self.

Faulty assumption. Abraham taking slaves was not God’s action. And as I showed above it was an act of mercy, not punishment.

Now with 1, I hope I’ve shown you how non-contradictory I take morality and rights. Perhaps you’ll find I’m not so “dim” after all.

Well no you really haven’t. All you given me is your opinions on what you think is wrong about slavery.

Philosophically you have in fact contradicted yourself, as demonstrated above.

As I’ve noted, what you claim is my philosophy isn’t my philosophy. I disagree with slave ownership not because of my opinion, but because to own a slave is to deny a man his most basic of rights.

But what are these “basic rights of man” and why do you believe in them? If you begin with nothing but “I believe these are the rights of man”, then you’re arguing in a circle.

My philosophy is to take into account the effect one has on others. It’s a philosophy that is simple, intuitive, and could never allow for slavery. It’s also a philosophy that outshines the one God seems to present when he endorses slavery and all of the horrible actions against slaves.

No, it really doesn’t. In fact its not even a really well thought out philosophy. Because by being an atheist you undercut the real source of all morality. You have no real reason to believe why slavery is wrong except to just believe it. Just like you jave no real reason to believe that man has rights except to just believe it. Its a circular argument.

 

[clem456]

Ok, so humans write the scripture which conveys God’s truth as he intends and inspires it.

Now here’s where my issues come into play:

1. We say God’s truth is that God is not in favor of slavery.
2. In a literal reading of the scripture (which was written by humans), it appears that God endorses slavery.

Yes, to the ancient mind God “appeared” this way and that. God endorsing slavery is one way to read it. This reading would be a fundamentalist or literalist reading (not sure which term fits best). Catholics do not read the bible as fundamentalists, as you seem to do.

1. God inspires scripture to say the exact opposite of its literal meaning.

Some of Scripture is merely history. Details. Nothing wrong with that. People are born, live their lives, have children, go to war, murder and enslave each other, and die. They build things and record the dimensions in mind numbing lists. The writers record these things. They attempt to discern God’s will in all these events. The truth is not that people live and act and build things. The truth is that through all these trials and failures, God’s story continues…his invitation to mankind to love him and each other continues, despite our stupidity. Much of the OT is incidental human details., but God’s truth runs throughout.

1. There is no allegorical or figurative reading of the scripture that shows God is against slavery.

That is easily debatable, unfortunately I don’t have the time to cite numerous scripture passages on a Saturday morning. God’s love and respect for the human dignity of every person is in there from the beginning from “He created them in his image”. The ancient mind did not have the same sensitivities to scripture we do. We can’t impose our minds on those of other cultures and times. We don’t really know how they thought. Understanding of God unfolds through time.

1. Humans have misinterpreted God’s position on slavery. It is completely wrong and utterly lacking in truth.

I think it would be fair to say that yes, ancient humans were relatively ignorant of God’s respect for human dignity. We today are still wrong about many things and we lack in truth, because we are human, and we are not God. We still misrepresent God’s will.

Would you be willing to consider that as an atheist, you have the interesting viewpoint that humans should be like gods, perfect in expression and without biases or flaw? It takes a lot of belief to reject humanity’s weaknesses and expect godlike perfection from them.

1. Despite the fact that scripture runs completely counter to what is intended and it is completely devoid of truth it was still inspired by God.

You’re mixing up human nature with God’s nature. Inspiration means the scriptures accomplish God’s purposes. It doesn’t mean that human beings give perfect expression of God’s will. It doesn’t mean that everything expressed is literally God’s will.

In short, why would God inspire scripture to say what it says about slavery when he is really against it? Is there a non-literal reading of those scriptures that makes sense for why it’s written as it’s written?
I understand the idea that someone can hear one thing and pass on something not 100% accurate to what was originally said. But when the final product is completely opposite to its proper meaning, then how much weight can we give to any scripture? On top of that it’s not as though there is just a single reference to slavery approval in the Bible. There are multiple instances each which support slavery and which are said to be interpreted. Heck, slaves are mentioned in the Ten Commandments.

The final product you refer to is embodied in the Gospel, which is Jesus Christ. The faith is not a book, it is a person. Jesus is God’s only and final word. There is nothing else that can be revealed. Jesus is it. The whole of scripture must be read in light of the person of Jesus Christ.
Our understanding of God’s will as expressed through Christ flourishes through time. God is always teaching us, and we learn slowly. God cannot contradict himself, human beings are contradicting. If humans inadequately express God’s will, that is not God’s fault, it is human fault.

Where in the Gospel does it say to not hold slaves? Where in the Gospel does it say that people were misinterpreting the earlier scriptures regarding slavery? Where does the Gospel trump the rest of scripture when there is a conflict between the two – especially since Jesus said that he wasn’t there to change one letter of the law?

This has to include the Hebrews who were said to have literally heard God speak to them after escaping Egypt.

Inspired scripture is not literal and fundamentalist as you are making it. Scripture is a living thing, as Jesus Christ lives. The Church expresses the truth of the Gospel over the centuries. The Church teaches the Gospel that every human person has God-given dignity. This is the light the scriptures must be read in. If read in the spirit of doubt and criticism, the truth of Jesus Christ cannot shine through. If the Church preaches the living Gospel, why do we want to stay stuck in mistaken notions of the past?

If you were a science teacher would you latch on the ancient notion that the earth is flat and hold the study of science to that mistaken notion? No, you go with the fullest understanding that has been revealed.

 

[clem456]

We all have a life story. We have lived in families, had heartbreaks, hurt other people, built things, worked jobs.

Each of us could write down our life story. If you write about the time you murdered someone, you will record the details, and you may also record your justifications and rationalizations (excuses) for murdering someone. Maybe you were ignorant of the immorality of murder, and maybe the laws in place at that time even condoned what you did (Nazi Germany)

Is it true that all through the story of your life, including your huge mistakes, murder was still immoral? That is true. Why then does your story not express this truth? Did your ignorance change the truth that murder is immoral? No, you told your story as you were able to express it.

If I judge who you are by the ignorance expressed in your story, am I treating you justly and truthfully? No. It would not be honest for me to say “you believe murder is acceptable, it’s right there in your story.” Your story does not express the truth that murder is acceptable, It expresses that you committed it and justified it. but the ultimate truth is still expressed…“even though I lived this way and committed these deeds and thought this way, the truth endures through my ignorance.” That is the underlying truth of the story.

 

[adrift]

Some good points. However, the verses in the links you provided do not give us the full context. Perhaps we all need to read what was said before and after to get a better grasp of what is being said.

Context does have a great deal to do with including the context of what society was. You can always twist with words.

Take the title of the links

Man slaughter his slave from that you would gather that the versus allowed the killing of the slave without punishment but that was not the case

It pretends that a Hebrew slave doesn’t have to beg and give up his freedom to keep his family.

5 But if the servant shall plainly say, I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free:

There is no pretending of anything but a reinterpretation of todays mindset and society with those of a different culture, time and society.

Your own abhorrence of what you see as slavery is not the mindset of the people of the time.

The Catholic Encyclopedia
states

The Mosaic Law was merciful to the slave (Exodus 21; Leviticus 25; Deuteronomy 15:21) and carefully secured his fair wage to the labourer (Deuteronomy 24:15). In Jewish society the slave was not an object of contempt, because labour was not despised as it was elsewhere.

 

[fisherman_carl]

I don’t think the bible says slavery is wrong. Rather, it sets up laws for the fair treatment of slaves. As slavery was part of the societal structure of that time. The bible advocates a just treatment of slaves and workers. A laborer is worth his wages.

Here is Jimmy Akin on slavery in the bible
catholic.com/radio/shows/open-forum-8104

The part about slavery starts at about 20:20

 

[fisherman_carl]

According to Jimmy Akin a number of laws were setup in the OT because of the hardness of their hearts. For instance, Jesus said Moses permitted divorce for this reason. If Moses had said divorce was wrong the people would not have been able to accept it. Thus, God was patient with them. Similarly, if God had said slavery wss wrong then perhaps the people could not have accepted it. Although, Israel themselves were slaves that had been set free from Egypt. So they may have been more sympathetic to the plight slaves who were maltreated. And would have been receptive to laws enforcing fair treatment of slaves.

 

[Amandil]

I’m sorry, but this whole slavery thing in a smoke screen. As I said in my previous post, even if the Bible explicitly condemned slavery, Mike and other atheists would simply find another excuse to be atheists.

They’re no different than protestants in this regard, they approach the Bible with their preconceived ideas, biases, and prejudices and interpret it according to those criteria.

They use the Bible to justify their atheism as a pretext at the same time ignoring the context.

 

[fisherman_carl]

Also, are you asking about Abraham in the bible or Abraham Lincoln? If Abraham from the bible then can you provide a verse that says he had a slave as I do not remember one.

 

[Peter_Plato]

For my mother it was a smack on the arm. She disciplined us, but I have three siblings and a total of nine nieces and nephews. My siblings stress discipline but do not use corporal punishment and they are all doing well in school and are very polite and attentive children. I agree discipline is important but I would disagree with you on the use that violence is a necessary aspect of that discipline.

I will assume you just don’t understand that this is a misrepresentation of my case. I didn’t argue that violence is a necessary aspect of discipline, though I did argue that they are not necessarily incompatible. That is a logical difference that you seem to have missed or ignored. Let’s assume you simply didn’t pick up on it.

Discipline could involve violence, but it need not.

In part, that is determined by the rational ‘freedom’ of the person who is the ‘patient’ regarding discipline. If the patient is beyond their own rational control, then ‘violence’ in the sense of physical restraint or corrective measures might be required, when all else fails.

And you can’t really make the analogy between how one would perceive your mother and one would perceive God. Your mother is not an all-powerful being (even though mothers sometimes feel like that when we’re little ). God is God. If he feels that we are falling away from him, then he has a multitude of other ways to go about bringing people to him that don’t require acts like slavery.

I suspect that you bring into this discussion a view of God that is simply not the one of Judeo-Christian beliefs. God does NOT use any and all measures toward the end of “bringing people to him.” He doesn’t, for example, simply alter our mental states to bring us into compliance. There is an underlying respect for freedom vis a vis our internal thoughts and motivations which preclude his intervening in that way. Certainly, such options would make all external constraints unnecessary, but the fact that our personal subjective integrity is respected and never violated by God, does, in some ways, make necessary external sanctions, often by others in the human community. Parents, police, judicial authorities, bar bouncers, security guards, etc., are all, at times, compelled to use physical constraint and even violence, to subdue and compel.

Do these cases make violence always excusable? No, but they to provide, at least, prima facie evidence that violence is at times an aspect of the human situation.

Also, can I assume that when punishment was doled out it was by her or your father, and that she didn’t ask one of your siblings (if you have any) to whack you with a spoon when she was mad at you? She has to be the disciplinarian as she’s above you, not the person on the same level as you – like a human slave owner to a human slave.

Obviously, if God wills, he could use a host of 'spoon-like’ discipline techniques to curb every human tendency towards evil. He doesn’t. The question is, ‘Why?’ His proclivity seems to be towards situational influences where we learn and grow organically from consequences. That proclivity does not exclude times where he might deem the use of instrumental corrective measures as the optimal means by which to curtail or subdue specific evils.

The problem is that we do not have access to the full body of data (internal subjective states, future consequences, far reaching impact, etc.) that God does in terms of taking moral action.

I realize that you will read this as a case of special pleading - and I would be quite happy to more fully defend against that objection - but it remains a plausible view that if God is morally responsible for the well-being of all human agents and if long term (and eternal) harm of some hangs in the balance, he would have a very different perspective regarding human good than we who are concerned merely with biological survival or earthly well-being. His existence makes all the difference regarding priority and weighing of consequences.

Discipline and freedom is not a zero-sum game. One can instill discipline in someone while allowing them certain freedoms. Plus it’s a far cry from telling students that they need to sit down and shut up in school with telling a man he can never see his family again unless he pledges loyalty forever to him and his god.

The word ‘forever’ seems misplaced regarding the temporal consequences of human pledges, in light of my comment above, in particular, if that pledge does in fact result in far more important eternal consequences.

Yes, I do understand that tangible earthly goods have an undeniable appeal given that they are ‘low hanging fruit’ and are readily available, so denying anyone access would seem a heinous travesty, but you do need to keep in mind that I am not speaking of some kind of ethereal fruit, but rather about something far more important, valuable and meaningful - the integral state of one’s own being.

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? (Mark 8:36)

I realize this idea seems nonsensical to ‘modern’ humans, but looking at those earth-bound humans who appear to possess complete freedom and unlimited access to the ‘external’ goods of the world, there are none that have anything worth trading essential ‘internal’ virtues for.

The problem, again, comes from conflating external freedom with internal freedom. External freedom does not guarantee happiness. In fact, in the absence of true internal integrity and a clear understanding of ‘the good’ the result of this kind of freedom (licence) often highlights indelibly the woeful lack of interiority and real personal autonomy.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

Of course there is, because you’re not a Bedouin tribal chief living 3000 years before the coming of the Roman Empire. Your a guy living in 21st century America and are basing your entire position from that perspective.

If your morality doesn’t come from God, then it comes from your subjective opinion.

That is a textbook false dichotomy. You’re ignoring:

1. Other gods besides the judeo-christian god.
2. The fact that different people have different subjective opinions on the judeo-christian god.
3. How the judeo-christian god is not consistent in his morality.
4. That experience and studying history give some basic ideas as to morality.
5. Some morality is built into our DNA. I talk about it briefly below.

What if another atheist is a nihilist, a communist, a hedonist, or a utilitarianist, or even a Nazi(nationalist-socialist); moralities diametrically opposed to yours.

What if two christians have different opinions on morality?

Which one is the correct morality? How do you know that yours is correct and theirs wrong? Why? How do you prove your morality without arguing in a circle? You can’t.

One thing you do is find points of agreement and work from there. If one party says “I think people should not be allowed to make bargains wherein they sacrifice their children.” If the second party says, “I think people should be allowed to sacrifice their daughters,” then compromise is impossible.

By leeway you mean you bend to those acts of immorality that you find agreeable, meaning that you decide what is moral or immoral, thus you’re a subjectivist.

I ask myself if I’d like to be denied every human instinct given to me. Then I wonder if I like being beaten and possibly killed. So long as I perform those same tests when judging all other acts then I would not say I’m a “subjectivist”. I’m someone with a sound moral code that calls a wrong a wrong.

It also begs the question. I doubt that you’ve actually done a real study or poll of relativists.

And even if they are (against slavery), then they are violating their philosophy of relativism.

Again, you assume that if someone doesn’t believe in your very narrow definition of god that they must be thrill-killing anarchists.

The golden rule is not something that christianity has trademarked. Cultures independent of christianity have come to the very simple and very moral conclusion that a person shouldn’t do things to another that they don’t want done to themselves.

1. Slavery is not “allowed and encouraged” by God, its tolerated.

That’s ludicrous. If I say that I’m against rape, but then I put up only very minor roadblocks in telling people when or how they can rape I’m more than just tolerating it. When I tell the victims of rape that they should be pleased that they are being raped and should serve to please their rapists, then I’m allow and encouraging rape. I would be advocating it.

1. “The rights of slave owners” is entirely a construct of your own imagination based upon your own biases and prejudices. You clearly lack any understanding of anything regards to the historical context of the culture and are basing everything solely on your assumptions.

Here’s what dictionary.com has to say for the noun version of “right”:

a just claim or title, whether legal, prescriptive, or moral: You have a right to say what you please.

Sometimes, rights. that which is due to anyone by just claim, legal guarantees, moral principles, etc.: women’s rights; Freedom of speech is a right of all Americans.

adherence or obedience to moral and legal principles and authority.

that which is morally, legally, or ethically proper: to know right from wrong.

a moral, ethical, or legal principle considered as an underlying cause of truth, justice, morality, or ethics.

Those biblical passages that I’ve quote so many times now spell out the terms to which slavery is moral, legal, and ethical. A “construct of [my] own imagination”? It’s all there in black and white.
{continued}

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

1. Your moral indignation against the Bible doesn’t begin with your opinions about slavery but your atheism. You’re merely using the mention of slavery in the Bible to justify that prejudice.

You know why I am indignant about slavery? It’s not because it’s in the Bible. It’s because I have a shred of humanity that despises seeing evil deeds done. I don’t look at the thousands – the millions – that have been affected by slavery as a statistic or as something to be whitewashed. It was and is a tragedy. To think that being against such crimes against the human state is because I have an opinion on the existance of a higher being is to be sorely mistaken. If you think that I’m incorrect about what the Bible says about slavery, that’s one thing; but to try and play it off as though my atheism is the sole reason one would hate slavery is a discredit to the many christians who (despite what the Bible said) fought and sometimes died trying to end the practice.

Even if slavery was explicitly condemned by the Bible you’d simply find another passage or another excuse to hate God and reject the Faith.

Trust me, there are plenty of items that make me hate what is written in the Bible (I don’t hate God as I don’t believe he exists). As I’ve mentioned probably the worst is when on another thread there were real live people living in the 21st century who were arguing in favor of a father (Lot) asking a gang of men to rape his daughters. They tried justifying that there as people are doing here with slavery.

But my rejecting of the faith came well before I knew all of the parts of the Bible that would turn one off. Bible reading was not encouraged in my CCD classes, and surely there was no mention of the things we’re discussing here. I rejected the faith simply because to me it didn’t add up. It was over a decade after that where I decided to go through the Bible cover-to-cover that I even knew about things like Jephthah and Abraham and the census punishment.

So let’s stop pretending that slavery has anything to do with this, shall we?

Slavery has everything to do with why I hate slavery. And that goes for all slavery not just the portion of it mentioned in the Bible.

You just contradicted yourself. You claimed that your sense of morality comes from a “different place” than your conscience, yet you then say that “I put a high value on the rights and dignity of others.”

Again, the golden rule as well as understanding of how people best cooperate. I would like people to value my rights and my dignity and so I will value theirs. And as I noted above, it’s built into our DNA to work together. One of the harshest non-physical punishments is solitary confinement. People have an innate need to connect with other people. Humans as a species would not have survived were it not for our communal instincts. It’s psychological, it’s emotional, and it’s genetic.

Your mischaracterization shows a terrible understanding of Bedouin cultures. If a conquered individual had the choice of a) being taken as a slave or b) being left out in the desert to die of exposure, even I wouldn’t be so stupid or prideful to take (b). Being taken as a slave was a mercy. You don’t know what you’re talking about.

You’re two for two on your false dichotomies. Why is there no third option that shows mercy as Jesus preached? And you only speak to conquered peoples. You ignore their children and their children and so on, as well as the children of slaves gotten by other means. You ignore the daughters whose father sold them into slavery.

You ignore the passages where God says he will cast out many nations. Truly he could have cast them out with kindness and without chains. He could have even made it so these other nations wouldn’t be there in the first place, so that he doesn’t have to fix a problem that he himself created.

In any case it is hypocritical because you’re still judging a person by your modern standards and not the circumstances and context of that culture.

I’ll say it again. Even if two people (including two christians) may have differing opinions on the extent of what constitutes morality, there is something so basic in the practice of slavery that only the cruelest of hearts would judge it moral.

But what are these “basic rights of man” and why do you believe in them? If you begin with nothing but “I believe these are the rights of man”, then you’re arguing in a circle.

Study sociology. Study psychology. Study history. Study the evolution of cooperation. It’s no accident that humans abhor murder, build societies, and protect the children of others that are not even their own. I note the irony in quoting a slaveholder like Thomas Jefferson, but when he wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” he summed up in thirty plus words what I mean by the basic rights of man.

No, it really doesn’t. In fact its not even a really well thought out philosophy. Because by being an atheist you undercut the real source of all morality. You have no real reason to believe why slavery is wrong except to just believe it. Just like you jave no real reason to believe that man has rights except to just believe it. Its a circular argument.

God – your specific interpretation of him – may be what you believe is the “real source” of morality but few would agree. Mine is a morality that may not be perfect, but it’s borne out of love and not threadbare excuses and embarrassing justifications.