Remember when "atheist" had a negative connotation?

Very interesting. The Bible contains a lot of things that happened... but not everything!

PS-ENslaved :-)

Bible and slavery wrote:

Responding to Wtfunny,

There were Christians and churches that tolerated slavery. But that does not change the fact that Bible-believing Christians formed the majority of the abolitionist movement. Those are the facts.

No. Those are SOME half-truths.

Xians in for greater numbers, and for far longer, also led the charge in support of slavery. And did so based on their scriptures. You're making the ridiculous argument that this small minority were somehow 'more Xian' than the others. An argument which, across all religions, has simply led to fights and divisions and jihads.

One could similarly argue that Xians, at that time, formed the majority of slaves. Or that now the majority of native americans are Xians. or whatever.

Numbers are simply numbers.

There weren't simply Xians and churches that "tolerated" (nice cherry picking of your words) slavery .. how about "enforced", "promoted", "supported", "practiced" ... slavery. The xian bible does all those things as well. To pretend it doesn't promote, at the very, very least, a tolerance of slavery is simply being ridiculous.

And don't waffle about "different forms of slavery"

The bible definitely documents chattel slavery. Don't pretend otherwise. Arguing that ancient Israel restricted their slavery to folks paying off their debts is simply nonsense or dishonesty or both.

SC similarly had codes saying slaves could only work XXX # of hours, etc, and both SC and AL had laws saying you weren't allowed to kill or dismember slaves. Your line of thought would be to tout these as examples of good xian people looking out for their slaves.

People in the US also bought their way out of slavery. That's not unique to anywhere.

The Israelites were commanded to free their (male) Hebrew slaves every 7 years. Foreigners? Not so much. Women? Not at all.

better yet, a man may sell his daughter into slavery and she is not to go free.

Or this gem

"Death is the punishment for beating to death any of your slaves. However, if the slave lives a few days after the beating, you are not to be punished. After all, you have already lost the services of that slave who was your property."

As for your claim that your god first led the charge AGAINST slavery, why would he then not banish it, but instead map out how to practice it?

It's not a complicated issue. A text that is so nuanced that it prescribes the exact method of death for wearing mixed cloth can't anywhere make a single claim against slavery? Not one. You can wrangle it anyway you like, and pretend as much as you want to .. but at the end of the day, it's simply not there.

Everyone perished in the flood except for Noah and his family. Again the flood destroyed all people whose DNA was corrupted. If there were people in the land of the Americas before the flood, they were not native americans as we know them today. I don't think we should go around messing with Abraham's tomb and piss off the muslims, haha. They hold him in high esteem too.

thejeff wrote:

Sloetry in Motion wrote:

Voluntary slavery......now I've heard it all. I'd say "you can't make this stuff up," but that seems to be exactly what Christians do.

I sincerely feel sorry for you.

You don't really think someone would volunteer themselves into a position where they were property, could be owned for the rest of their lives, passed on to their master's children, and be beat so long as they didn't die soon after?

It's a humorously bad rationalization.

And here I thought you'd promised you'd be an honest person on here?

you've posted numerous times without addressing the question. And just done so again.

No it wasn't. But the slavery movement was. Fought and died over.

Nothing is ever "As simple as that". You're being ridiculous reductive to make that claim.

"twist scripture" = "interpret it differently than I've just done so".

The scripture fails on the issue of slavery and fails hard.

I hope not too. You haven't addressed anything. You simply regurgitate these lies, and then continue to ignore the reality that your text doesn't once speak out against slavery; a hideous practice that was rampant in the times the scriptures were written.

One can only imagine why not.

Stop pretending that you know the Bible, you come off as a fool everytime you cherry pick a verse out of context. Your desperation to win at all costs here is amusing.

In the Bible, there is no chattel slavery. Even for foreign slaves, who were often prisoners of war, they were to have civil rights and liberty.

There was no form of servitude under the Law of Moses which placed them in the legal position of chattel slaves. Legislation maintained kinship rights (Exodus 21:3, 9, Leviticus 25:41, 47-49, 54, providing for Hebrew indentured servants), marriage rights (Exodus 21:4, 10-11). Need I go on?

As for pulling out the atheist fanboy website verse of the day, Exodus 21:20 how about the verse 26?

And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake. And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake – Exodus 21:26-27 both men and women have rights.

Ok, I'm heading to the gym; after all my body is a temple unto the Lord. Will continue this later. Cheers.

I apologize for my grammatical error, (I try very hard to be perfect, but alas, Jesus, I am not) thank you for pointing out my mistake and not getting obnoxiously grammar nazi with me. Believe me when I say, I've had a belly full of posters that can't/won't contribute to a thread, but will be the first incubus to point out your foible/s while fishing for a fight. I for one refuse to give these misguided souls the satisfaction of a reply. Although I don't wish them any harm, I'd lose no tears if they were to dry up and get blown away on the next wind.

Peace and Love to All!

Sloetry in Motion wrote:

thejeff wrote:

I sincerely feel sorry for you.

You don't really think someone would volunteer themselves into a position where they were property, could be owned for the rest of their lives, passed on to their master's children, and be beat so long as they didn't die soon after?

It's a humorously bad rationalization.

That isn't what happened, son. Read your textbook. Or, just try reading the posts on this thread. It is pretty well explained.

It's very easy to look back through history with 21st century glasses and say."WTF were those people thinking? Slavery, are you $hitting me?"

It wasn't that long ago in American history that we had, "white indentured slavery." Do you remember this from your HS history class? White Europeans that wanted to come to the "New World" sold themselves into voluntary servitude?

It's really easy if you don't know recent history, to read the Old/New Testament and cast aspersions on people who came from an even less enlightened time and judge them from 4-6000 years ago by the standards you/we live by today.

It'll never be possible for any of us to judge them based on their beliefs or how they lived. We can't even be so bold as to pretend we could ever walk in their shoes and do things differently. $hit man fvck, they didn't even have shoes back then! How the hell do you think you can look at/read scriptures and make 21st century judgments against people who didn't even have shoes? Yes, they had sandals but sandals aren't shoes, are they?

For people that believe in evolution why can't you just look back in time and see/appreciate how far we've evolved, (we now have shoes and sandals) appreciate where we are now, but, to also try to understanding where we came from, instead of trying to marginalizing why some of our population believes what they believe.

no chattel slavery? really? "they were to have civil rights and liberty"?Like this?Leviticus 25:44-46New International Version (NIV)44 “‘Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you; from them you may buy slaves. 45 You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. 46 You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property and can make them slaves for life, but you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly."That's liberty to you?

And if a man smite the eye of his servant, or the eye of his maid, that it perish; he shall let him go free for his eye’s sake. And if he smite out his manservant’s tooth, or his maidservant’s tooth; he shall let him go free for his tooth’s sake – Exodus 21:26-27 both men and women have rights.

Those are some pretty b!tchin' rights. If you lose an eye or a tooth, you walk.

"It's all in the game, yo."

Omar Little.

But do post a note pointing out where the bible derides slavery. Because we know it was common enough in both the OT and the culture surrounding the NT. And if neither of them spoke a word against it ... ???

Seriously .. listen to yourself .. you're suggesting any/all this above is just fine with you? That's a moral code for your ultimate source of love and good and intelligence?

I'll take my slavery free atheism over your "we don't condone chattel slavery" faith thanks.

Mark Twain had some great things to say regarding slavery.

From "Bble Teaching And Religious Practice":

"...

The methods of the priest and the parson have been very curious, their history is very entertaining. In all the ages the Roman Church has owned slaves, bought and sold slaves, authorized and encouraged her children to trade in them. Long after some Christian peoples had freed their slaves the Church still held on to hers. If any could know, to absolute certainty, that all this was right, and according to God's will and desire, surely it was she, since she was God's specially appointed representative in the earth and sole authorized and infallible expounder of his Bible. There were the texts; there was no mistaking their meaning; she was right, she was doing in this thing what the Bible had mapped out for her to do. So unassailable was her position that in all the centuries she had no word to say against human slavery. Yet now at last, in our immediate day, we hear a Pope saying slave trading is wrong, and we see him sending an expedition to Africa to stop it. The texts remain: it is the practice that has changed. Why? Because the world has corrected the Bible. The Church never corrects it; and also never fails to drop in at the tail of the procession -- and take the credit of the correction. As she will presently do in this instance..."

"...Christian England supported slavery and encouraged it for two hundred and fifty years, and her church's consecrated ministers looked on, sometimes taking an active hand, the rest of the time indifferent. England's interest in the business may be called a Christian interest, a Christian industry. She had her full share in its revival after a long period of inactivity, and his revival was a Christian monopoly; that is to say, it was in the hands of Christian countries exclusively. English parliaments aided the slave traffic and protected it; two English kings held stock in slave-catching companies. The first regular English slave hunter -- John Hawkins, of still revered memory -- made such successful havoc, on his second voyage, in the matter of surprising and burning villages, and maiming, slaughtering, capturing, and selling their un-offending inhabitants, that his delighted queen conferred the chvalric honor of knighthood on him -- a rank which had acquired its chief esteem and distinction in other and earlier fields of Christian effort. The new knight, with characteristic English frankness and brusque simplicity, chose as his device the figure of a negro slave, kneeling and in chains. Sir John's work was the invention of Christians, was to remain a bloody and awful monopoly in the hands of Christians for a quarter of a millennium, was to destroy homes, separate families, enslave friendless men and women, and break a myriad of human hearts, to the end that Christian nations might be prosperous and comfortable, Christian churches be built, and the gospel of the meek and merciful Redeemer be spread abroad in the earth; and so in the name of his ship, unsuspected but eloquent and clear, lay hidden prophecy. She was called The Jesus.

"... But at last in England, an illegitimate Christian rose against slavery. It is curious that when a Christian rises against a rooted wrong at all, he is usually an illegitimate Christian, member of some despised and bastrd sect. There was a bitter struggle, but in the end the slave trade had to go -- and went. The Biblical authorization remained, but the practice changed.

Then -- the usual thing happened; the visiting English critic among us began straightway to hold up his pious hands in horror at our slavery. His distress was un-appeasable, his words full of bitterness and contempt. It is true we had not so many as fifteen hundred thousand slaves for him to worry about, while his England still owned twelve millions, in her foreign possessions; but that fact did not modify his wail any, or stay his tears, or soften his censure. The fact that every time we had tried to get rid of our slavery in previous generations, but had always been obstructed, balked, and defeated by England, was a matter of no consequence to him; it was ancient history, and not worth the telling...."

Twain was a smart man.

The faithful have been behind the game on virtually every step forward in the fights for human rights around the planet .. since there have been faithful.

And when some of those faithful did bravely stand up against some institutionalized wrong, the majority of the crowd lambasted them (if not burned them). Once progress had moved a little further along, and the center of gravity swayed in another direction, the faithful came out of their holes and stood tall and loudly proclaimed the old faithful hideously out of touch with true faith and (their interpretation of their) god's word.

Until the next step came up.

If your debts are forgiven after 7 years how are they debts?

thejeff wrote:

Some Things are Funny wrote:

Especially all of those one year olds. They REALLY hated God!

Seriously, if anyone not steeped in the culture of this BS were to read the mental contortions that you (and many others) resort to in order to try to keep your imaginary world intact they simply would not believe you could possibly be serious.

Damned hateful one year olds!

You clearly don't have kids ;-)

FYI, to some of the more gullible folks who have been posting on this thread, there are two posters using the same handle "Bible and slavery", and ya'll are getting seriously trolled about giant skulls... you are welcome :-)

Actually, I've raised five kids. But I'll give you credit for a cute quote.

“Whoever kidnaps someone, either to sell him or to keep him as a slave is to be put to death.” – Exodus 21:16

"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female – for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." –Galatians 3:28

Do these two verses sound like condoning slavery?

You are quoting Leviticus 25:44-36 out of context. When you include Leviticus 25: 39-40, you get the full context:

“If any Israelites living near you become SO POOR that THEY SELL THEMSELVES to you as a slave, you shall not make them do the work of a slave. They shall stay with you as hired workers and serve you until the next Year of Restoration.” Btw, the Hebrew word for this is "ebed". Which means servant or bondman. The central issue here is that slavery was initiated BY the servant, NOT by the owners, DEFINITELY not by force.

The issue of poverty was one of the reasons that people sold themselves as servants. There were also provisions for freedom. They could be bought back by a relative, or by their own money. Working for someone else did not mean that they received nothing. “By their own money” (v. 49) meant a certain freedom to gain money and buy their own freedom.

Israel was prohibited from territorial gains beyond what God had promised to Abraham (Deuteronomy 2:1-23). Moreover, Israel was prohibited the practice of “forced slavery” as seen in Exodus 21:16, “Whoever kidnaps someone, either to sell him or to keep him as a slave, is to be put to death.”

In another passage Moses declares, “If any of you kidnap Israelites and make them your slaves or sell them into slavery, you are to be put to death. In this way your nation will get rid of this evil” – Deuteronomy 24:7. In the first one, there is a general prohibition against slavery of anyone and in the second, a specific order against slavery of Israelites.

Wtfunny, stick with your bears and pictures. Goodnight.

Wtfunny, did you ever go to church while growing up? Or did you grow up in a family that did not believe in God and passed it on to you? Just curious.

“If a man sells his daughter as a servant, she is not to go free as male servants do: - Exodus 21:7

Well, we know there ARE males and females, and there ARE Jew and Greek .. and this text isn't denying those realities, is it. It's clearly no more saying the institution of slavery is abhorrent and should be abandoned than it says gender is abhorrent.

They certainly aren't critical of it. Particularly in the greater context of laying out the rules for how viciously you're allowed to beat your slaves.

"If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his property."

It sure SOUNDS like force is part of this equation, doesn't it.

But you're also pretending that this kind of thing was took place in a perfect world. And even a cursory look at that part of the world shows it's far from that (as is everywhere). What do you suppose the conditions were for people who suddenly became so indebted to another man that they sold themselves and their families to 6 or more year of slavery? Do you think it was based on a sound justice system? You think it was just 2 people of equal footing and one suddenly owed the other one 6-7 years of his and his family's life because .. because .. what? What on earth was going on in their economy 3000 years ago that a man might owe another man up to 1/3 of his life?

I'd suggest, at best, it was no different to the justice system that sent children and teenagers half way around the world because someone decided they'd taken a slice of bread too many.

And then, you polish it up and call it indentureship or debt. It's nonsense.

I tell you what ... the next time "any Israelites living near you become SO POOR that THEY SELL THEMSELVES to you as a slave," you call me, OK? I wanna see this.

And, more to the point, if that was perfectly OK then, where in the bible does it say that's not OK now?

"As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you."

Why would people in other nations be initiating indentured slavery of themselves to Hebrews?

You buy them from other nations. The text you quoted is a very different thing .. and you already know this .. referring only to Hebrew slaves. In short, you can't buy Hebrew slaves, they must sell themselves to you .. but from your neighbors, have at it.

Leviticus explicitly commands it's OK to buy and sell people. Even to inherit them. Non-israelite slaves were forever, they were inheritable property.

Leviticus also spells out the value of a slave .. 30 shekels.

Deuteronomy makes it perfectly clear that it's quite OK to make slaves of captives in war.

They make it quite clear it's perfectly OK to sell your daughter into sexual slavery and what the rules are if she doesn't please her new master.

You're deliberately ignoring the difference between how your bible instructs people to treat their neighbors. Not to mention, ignoring the ridiculousness of people selling themselves as slaves (don't call them servants .. do you REALLY think these people, who were allowed to be beaten within a day or 2 of their lives, were treated as "servants"? Bring me my tea and vacuum the floor. WTF? That's akin to calling gladiators the equivalent of pro football players. It's absolutely ridiculous.

Oh look, you did it again.

There's definitely a pattern here.

Essentially, all you've done is point out that your bible says it's not OK to buy and sell your own people (other than your daughter, of course), but it's perfectly OK to buy and sell people of neighboring nations; kinda like saying white people could buy and sell black people, but not other white people. Mexicans would be the modern day equivalent, I suppose.

Bears are sleeping, bro.

But I'm sure you knew that. Right?