If The Bible Got Slavery Wrong.....

[Guest]

"Slavery in the Bible that would viewed as acceptable." lol Of course slavery wouldn't be included in your list of immoral actions found in the Bible. I'm not going to look up the specific verses on beating slaves and children being born into "indentured servitude" they're there if you want to view them just Google.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Guest

[Guest]

Just now, Anomaly said:

Lol.   Humanity grew up and learned more about ethics, economics, applied empathy, etc.    It wasn't a magic being changing its mind and making new rules in a rule book. 

Jesus seemed way ahead of his time to me. He brings the Bible to life.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Guest

[<3 PopeFrancis]

EWTN's  Father Mitch Pacwa is a very good source on the Old Testament.

@Josh, might want to try Fr. Ripperger's conferences.  PHD in St. Thomas Aquinas Studies.  These discourses will lead you to the gateway.  You will have enough information to know why The Church says it is wrong.

They both reference the bible and the mid-century Fathers.

[fides' Jack]

5 hours ago, Josh said:

"Slavery in the Bible that would viewed as acceptable." lol Of course slavery wouldn't be included in your list of immoral actions found in the Bible. I'm not going to look up the specific verses on beating slaves and children being born into "indentured servitude" they're there if you want to view them just Google.

Obviously indentured servitude is different than what we think of as "slavery".  That's the distinction I was trying to make.

Since you were unable to provide sources for the things you mentioned (I'm assuming you're just too busy), I did try to look them up as you suggested.  What I found was mostly in Exodus 21, which lists some rules about how "slaves" (read: indentured servants) are to be treated.  At least there, beating them is obviously wrong.  Interestingly, the references I did find that might suggest what you're implying came from Protestant translations.  My favorite translation, the one I'm most familiar with (Douay-Rheims), uses the terms "bondsman" and "bondswoman", which also has much different connotations than "slave" in our culture.  And in those cases, the context seems to be limiting what is considered appropriate behavior towards slaves - not advocating even what we today consider immoral behavior (see Leviticus 25).

I've heard arguments like yours before, but I've never seen a good source for it.  Granted, I have not read the Bible cover-to-cover - especially the early books that deal with numbers and laws.

So, again I ask, please provide sources.

[Ice_nine]

11 hours ago, Anomaly said:

Lol.   Humanity grew up and learned more about ethics, economics, applied empathy, etc.    It wasn't a magic being changing its mind and making new rules in a rule book. 

Moral progression is a myth. So we're not burning heretics at the stake anymore, the unborn are murdered en masse, there's little civility in public discourse, children are trafficked and their torture is broadcast on the dark web.

We're just as evil as we've always been if you want to talk about humanity as a collective.

[LittleWaySoul]

1 minute ago, Ice_nine said:

Moral progression is a myth. So we're not burning heretics at the stake anymore, the unborn are murdered en masse, there's little civility in public discourse, children are trafficked and their torture is broadcast on the dark web.

We're just as evil as we've always been if you want to talk about humanity as a collective.

So glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. My brother thinks I'm insane. 

[Ice_nine]

2 minutes ago, LittleWaySoul said:

So glad I'm not the only one who thinks this. My brother thinks I'm insane. 

I've found there's a few different camps. Some people think we are morally bereft and certainly the world must be ending because we are so evil. Others think that, having shed the shackles of old religious superstition we are the most morally advanced people in history and it's just a dying fragment of believers holding us back from ~*true enlightenment*~

It's probably more or less the same degree of depravity. Just different than the old days.

[Nihil Obstat]

I tend to think that we collectively are worse off that at certain points in the more distant past due to mankind's almost complete loss of understanding of the fundamental basis of moral law.

We are very scientifically advanced, but when it comes to ethics we are imbeciles.

[<3 PopeFrancis]

5 minutes ago, Nihil Obstat said:

I tend to think that we collectively are worse off that at certain points in the more distant past due to mankind's almost complete loss of understanding of the fundamental basis of moral law.

We are very scientifically advanced, but when it comes to ethics we are imbeciles.

We are definitely worse off.  Maybe because of the way scientific advancement is used.

[Anomaly]

Humanity is much more moral than in the past.   I'm not saying society is perfectly moral.    We also have the capacity to wreak greater havoc with technology, as well as communicate horrors around the globe instaneously.  We have more awareness as well as greater capability.  

To say otherwise is choosing to be pessimistic and hopeless about humanity.  Of course that attitude plays into the powere of theist clergy who claim they're agents of the Divine Power who will fix what's wrong.  That same attitude gives power to anarchist atheists who choose to deem life as pointless. 

We don't have half the world engaged in institutional slavery like we used to.  It still happens, but it is not as widespread.  

Humanity has the power and responsibility to continue to work against it.  Its counterproductive to just sigh, and leave it to a God to fix things in a next life or shrug your shoulders because you personally aren't a slave today.  Your God book may say it's bad today, but someone else's God book may say it's their divine right to enslave you tomorrow.  And that group over there reads the same God book and interprets they're to kill everyone else.  

Human intellect and reason is needed.  Not just a gun duel between God Book factions.  The more powerful and moral God is determined by the winner?  We haven't learned about the religious wars in the past?  

We know and apply much more morality.  Humanity still has a problem with stupidity and commitment to superstitions.  We have and are making progress.  Like most self improvement.  It's slow and difficult when we refuse to learn.

[Ice_nine]

12 minutes ago, Anomaly said:

Humanity is much more moral than in the past.   I'm not saying society is perfectly moral.    We also have the capacity to wreak greater havoc with technology, as well as communicate horrors around the globe instaneously.  We have more awareness as well as greater capability.  

To say otherwise is choosing to be pessimistic and hopeless about humanity.  Of course that attitude plays into the powere of theist clergy who claim they're agents of the Divine Power who will fix what's wrong.  That same attitude gives power to anarchist atheists who choose to deem life as pointless. 

We don't have half the world engaged in institutional slavery like we used to.  It still happens, but it is not as widespread.  

Humanity has the power and responsibility to continue to work against it.  Its counterproductive to just sigh, and leave it to a God to fix things in a next life or shrug your shoulders because you personally aren't a slave today.  Your God book may say it's bad today, but someone else's God book may say it's their divine right to enslave you tomorrow.  And that group over there reads the same God book and interprets they're to kill everyone else.  

Human intellect and reason is needed.  Not just a gun duel between God Book factions.  The more powerful and moral God is determined by the winner?  We haven't learned about the religious wars in the past?  

We know and apply much more morality.  Humanity still has a problem with stupidity and commitment to superstitions.  We have and are making progress.  Like most self improvement.  It's slow and difficult when we refuse to learn.

We disagree on the matter of our present epoch being morally exemplary, but that makes me neither pessimistic nor hopeless. And who advocated we abandon reason? Moreover who is saying we should just shrug our shoulders and have God deal with it? Talk about cynicism. 

I think we're just as bad as we've always been. How is that pessimism? We could be worse.

"we’re doomed to repeat the past no matter what. That’s what it is to be alive. It’s pretty dense kids who haven’t figured that out by the time they’re ten."

[Anomaly]

An interesting article looking at the issue and how we are becoming more morally intelligent. 

//reason.com/r/11N4 The connection between increasing IQs, decreasing violence, and economic liberalism