Religion was never designed for independent, intelligent thought. In any iteration.
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It doesn’t. You are conflating what is written in the Bible with the actual religious practice. The Bible has prohibitions with regard to shellfish but Christians may eat it. Also, allows is present tense but what you should have written was allowed and even that is historically debatable and more nuanced than your post would suggest. Many early Christians were slaves themselves.
The short answer is that slavery existed in the world inhabited by early Christians. Although they didn’t explicitly preach against the institution, they didn’t encourage its existence nor did they encourage Christians to enslave others. Once Christians had real power and political influence, they actively sought to end the institution because, unlike what your post suggests, Christianity does not allow it.
So religious practice shouldn’t mirror guideline text?
This is another issue, Christianity constantly redefines itself and what it considers acceptable to remain relevant, despite an alleged literal belief in canonical books.
Who is shaping who?
This is simplistic. It was thanks to Christian monks that Aristotle and Plato and Ancient Greek thought in general, were reintroduced to the West.
Interpretation. Christians have two books, the Old and New Testaments. It’s how the two, guided by the teachings of Christ, reconcile themselves.
This is historically untrue. It’s sophomoric. Issuing papal bulls against slavery were examples of going against what was acceptable. It was dangerous as it put the Church in conflict with the monarchies.
Indirectly, sure. The pope wasn’t selling Greek mythology books to the public though.
Manipulation to maintain existence doesn’t bode well for legitimacy.
The Epistle to Philemon was the first step toward showing that God is not a respecter of persons between master and slave. Paul told Philemon (the master) to accept Onesimus (the slave of Philemon) as a brother. This relationship of equal status in the eyes of God.
Pragmatically, the freedom of all slaves at that same moment would have left them in extreme economic peril in those days. But the most important step was now on record. Man is a little slow to take it to its end.
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Yep, there is constant re-negotiation with the text and how it applies.
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As if they could have read anything, especially Ancient Greek.
One could argue that as the influence of the secular world of emperors and kings and dictators over what is just and moral has waned, Christians have the freedom to seek more clarity in what was written. The separation of church and state has benefits that go both ways.
So is God’s nature changing, then, or is the bible a fallible account of literal truth? Or do the two testaments represent separate gods?
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Same God. Different dispensations.
2 Timothy 2:15, “Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.”
When God gave Moses the Law, was that a different God than the God that gave Noah a covenant?
It was a story written by humans over a very long time, and rife with inconsistencies that make a literal belief in the text difficult if not impossible.
Early church leadership knew this, eliminated and edited books as necessary and sold the canonization as an organized religion which was then force fed via literal threat of execution.
And even today, people are willing to ignore dogma, inconsistencies and fallacies because they’ve been taught to.
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If you don’t believe the word of God, why not just reply that to me? I would have respected the honesty at the start.
Show me the inconsistencies and fallacies.
Jesus multiplied fish. Therefore it was carnivore diet, so yeah Christianity is dumb.
Says the person who posted a drawing of a deaerator and references it as a boiler.
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Nah that was a boiler. Google told me.
Btw I don’t think Christianity is dumb.
There goes my faith in Google. Just must double check everything
Reddit is better anyway. You’re not missing out.
I honestly dont know how anyone can read leviticus and not think the bible is a joke. But that is fine.
But a lot of the old testament is rebranded from the first booi in history, the Epic of Gilgamesh. It had the virgin birth, the great flood (which is most likely “true” as mesopotamia probably felt like the whole world to people living there)