The Torah does not say slavery is acceptable (at least in Orthodox Judaism – I don’t know or particularly care how heretics or non-Jewish people misinterpret our Torah, particularly as they are largely ignorant of the Talmud).
In fact, slavery, as an institution, is roundly criticized and attack through the entirety.
It is, however, accepted as a fact of human nature – don’t forget the Torah was recorded just shortly after my people fled enslavement by north Africans. It’s not like we’re fans.
The law sets out minimum behavioral standards of so-called masters to avoid Divine punishment.
I am talking about the old testament of the Christian bible. Maybe the Torah has different editing?
Well it lays out the rules for permissibly owing slaves in Exodus 21. That is a fact.
Sure, you have that right. I also don’t know how you could determine who is interpreting things correctly (must be a faith thing). You can also read Exodus 21 yourself. That particular chapter doesn’t need a whole lot of interpreting.
Not to speak for Jewbacca, but the point I think he is trying to make is that slavery was a given back then. The ancient Greeks invented democracy yet they also had slavery.
It does require a 6 B.C. contextual understanding of culture and society. You cannot overlay 21st century norm and values (or lack there of) over a text that was written 27 centuries ago and expect to understand it’s meaning. The only way you can extract meaning from the OT is in context.
Doesn’t that seem a bit contradictory to a few ideas in Christianity.
Claiming that God changed what was permissible to fit with the culture of the time would be an admission that you think God mandated what he thought was immoral to fit with people’s beliefs (also, if this is true, how do we know what God wants now? Perhaps the NT is outdated at this point?). That doesn’t jive with a God that is supposed to be the arbiter of objective morality.
Based on other strange laws in the OT, it doesn’t fit that God would care what the people of the time believed. If he was okay saying you can’t wear mixed fabric, it seems like saying that it isn’t permissible to own people as property wouldn’t be too out of line. Maybe if the Bible is correct, then slavery is permissible from an objective morality standpoint?
No, it doesn’t seem like that at all to me. God can tell us as a general rule to not kill. Yet tell the Israelites to kill the Canaanites to man, woman, and child. Then, just to drive it home, arbitrarily end the universe to top it off.
His commands to us are the objective morality WE must follow. The objective moral is obedience.
Sloth, I know that is your position. You are consistent. I don’t think your view of Christianity is shared by many though.
I think many see the morals set by God as set in stone, and that he is consistent with them. Those many are likely unaware of much that is in the Bible. They think they are consistent with the Bible, but are not.
That would mean our morality isn’t objective in that they are subject to His, which we wouldn’t completely have knowledge of since He can order certain exceptions to what we accept as moral based on the Bible.
Which means the idea of absolute morality wouldn’t exist or there’s a clause in small print somewhere stating “subject to divine alteration” like a floating interest rate or something lol.
Correct. Ours isn’t. Objective morality, moral obligations, moral duties, aren’t found in us. Without an ultimately inescapable judge of how we ought (not can) to behave…Well, in a Godless universe, there is nothing but what temporary human whim can be enforced at a fleeting moment with ultimately zero repercussions (since we all would enter annihilation). Like fighting over the best favorite color.
I am religious, but I disagree that non-religious people do not develop some form of objective morality.
I’ll put it this way:
Christians obviously think other religions are false, right? Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, etc.
If they are false, they are man-made. So what you had were societies of “atheists” developing a common moral code of their own within a certain geographical region without divine intervention.
Eventual worship of deities would most likely have been a result of not understanding certain phenomena that we can now explain by science and/or a need for dealing with sorrow and fear of death with the hope of some form of continuity after one has died.
Look at how Buddhism started off as secular and turned into deism as an example.
If you believe in a set of moral laws outside of humanity, where are they? Not under a microscope or telescope. Faith-based. Gotta go for the night. Take care!
I don’t necessarily disagree. But, like I said, if you are Christian, you have to believe that, unlike Christianity, all other religions were formed by “aetheists” who formed this set of moral laws, which led to deism, which required faith, which ultimately evolved to be a net gain for society(unless you live in one of the countries where politicians abuse religion to control the masses).
Likewise, present day aetheists would be the same, and they already have a set of moral values ingrained in them from our present day society. One would simply need faith that society requires a form of order and that others will reciprocate their good actions trying to maintain this order.
The average person just wants to have a good job, good friends, fuck and watch netflix and not have to be afraid of adverse things like being physically harmed.
The ones who are really fucked up are already fucked up just like there are crazy religious people who do shitty things. Please don’t bring up antita or the extremists in the BLM movement. They’re crazy fucks.
It’s like mid day here for me lol. Good night anyway!
Another thing I’ve just thought about after remembering a conversation with @squating_bear some time ago where he brought up “Muslims in name only”.
How many “Christians” do you guys know are really Christians? I know Christians who only say they’re Christians but don’t practice their faith but they like our holidays, and almost all Buddhists(the worshipping kind) I know only go to the temple to ask for favors.
The Muslims I know don’t like talking about their religion so I wouldn’t know about them other than their Friday mosque attendance and daily prayers.
Half my Hindu friends don’t do much other than celebrate religious festivals so it’s more of a customary/cultural thing than a religious one.
And all my Caucasian friends IRL are atheist. They’re all normal, upper middle class people with spouses and kids.
I know only one Jew(are Jews Caucasian? I’m not sure) and he’s at the “doesn’t touch money and cellphone on Sunday” level of piousness but he’s also openly gay. Dude’s rich and lives in a hotel residential suite.
I’m also gonna say this at the expense of ruffling a few feathers. The most immoral, fucked up dipshits I’ve had the misfortune of meeting are usually the more religious ones, regardless of religion.
I am agreeing with a lot of your posts from the last day. To me it just seems to much of a coincidence that all the societies with different religions developed very similar sets of moral principles. It seems even the higher intelligence animals have a similar set or morals (apes and such). It seems that the morals all seem to benefit one trying to live in society with others, like as you say here:
I would go as far as to say faith isn’t really needed here. I think that is a reasonable expectation based on tons of people living together for thousands of years.
I don’t pretend to know much more about religion than what I learned in catechism classes for a couple of years but the idea of “absolute morality” falls short IMO when you factor in all the other religions that exist. It wouldn’t make sense for God to have placed the idea of “absolute morality” in the minds of those who aren’t “meant to be saved” either, which would also invalidate the idea of “free will”.
I’m really willing, and hoping to be proven wrong, though. I’ve been struggling with these questions for years.
Yeah, I agree. Perhaps I should have put the word “faith” in between semi-colons. It’s also why i asked how many people actually know truly devout religious practitioners. They’re not much different from life-long agnostics and even atheists, just with religious values ingrained in them from childhood if their parents were really pious.
No. Context is important. You have to understand that the prescriptions of Exodus 21 was probably a quantum leap better than where they were before it. From a time where life was cheap, the scriptures helped people increasingly value each other more and more over time. It wasn’t adjusting to the times, it was creating better human relations over time. Christianity and the NT is a continuation of the OT attempt to value human life more and more. It’s the arc that starts in Genesis and continued through Revelation and beyond.
If you do not understand that, in context then you won’t know what it’s really trying to teach.
The scriptures didn’t adjust to the times, it continually advanced civilization, pushing it to be better all the time. The Bible is setup the way it is very deliberately. And it tracks with the ancients becoming more and more civil over time.
A lot of what you bring up really sounds a lot like the cherry picking I have seen on atheist website’s supposedly “analyzing” the Bible. “Hey, look at this fucked up passage!” “Those dumb Judeo-Christian types. Look at the crazy shit they believe!”
Oh they most certainly do. But many of them claim it’s not objective, it’s subjective. But just because they believe it’s subjective, it doesn’t stop them from behaving as if it were objective. And if you hit them (or anybody) close to home, with obviously immoral behavior, they like anybody else will fight for justice.
Is it deism? Based on my experience Buddhism on its face, is an atheistic religion in that they don’t believe in a single, all encapsulated deity. But, it seems to me that the energies and spirits they invoke, summed up would all be characteristics of who we in the west call God. I do not know, if at higher levels of Buddhism they start to roll all these forces and powers up in to one ultimate Thing or not, but I suspect they might. I am willing to be educated on the matter, I just haven’t paid that much attention to it. Most of my experience are hippy-type, self described, pseudo-Buddhists who walk around blabbering ‘Namaste’ and read one book and claim to meditate.